Contemporary Islam

Prior to Napoleon's invasion, almost all of Egypt's
educational, legal, public health, and social welfare issues were
in the hands of religious functionaries. Ottoman rule reinforced
the public and political roles of the ulama (religious scholars)
because Islam was the state religion and because political
divisions in the country were based on religious divisions.
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, successive
governments made extensive efforts to limit the role of the ulama
in public life and to bring religious institutions under closer
state control. The secular transformation of public life in Egypt
depended on the development of a civil bureaucracy that would
absorb many of the ulama's responsibilities in the country.

After the 1952 Revolution, the government assumed
responsibility for appointing officials to mosques and religious
schools. The government mandated reform of Al Azhar University
beginning in 1961. These reforms permitted department heads to be
drawn from outside the ranks of the traditionally trained
orthodox ulama. At the same time, the government established a
number of modern faculties, including medicine, engineering, and
commerce. The media periodically campaigned against the ulama as
old-fashioned members of a "priestly caste."

As of 1990, Egyptian Islam was a complex and diverse
religion. Although Muslims agreed on the faith's basic tenets,
the country's various social groups and classes applied Islam
differently in their daily lives. The literate theologians of Al
Azhar University generally rejected the version of Islam
practiced by illiterate religious preachers and peasants in the
countryside. Most upper- and middle-class Muslims believed either
that religious expression was a private matter for each
individual or that Islam should play a more dominant role in
public life. Islamic religious revival movements, whose appeal
cut across class lines, were present in most cities and in many
villages.

Today devout Muslims believe that Islam defines one's
relationship to God, to other Muslims, and to non-Muslims. They
also believe that there can be no dichotomy between the sacred
and the secular. Many devout Muslims say that Egypt's governments
have been secularist and even antireligious since the early
1920s. Politically organized Muslims who seek to purge the
country of its secular policies are referred to as "Islamists."

Orthodox ulama found themselves in a difficult position
during the wave of Islamic activism that swept through Egypt in
the 1970s and 1980s. Radical Islamists viewed the ulama as
puppets of the status quo. To maintain their influence in the
country, the ulama espoused more conservative stances. After
1974, for example, many Al Azhar ulama, who had acquiesced to
family planning initiatives in the 1960s, openly criticized
government efforts at population control. The ulama also
supported moves to reform the country's legal code to conform to
Islamic teaching. They remained, nonetheless, comparatively
moderate; they were largely loyal to the government and condemned
the violence of radical Islamist groups.

Egypt's largely uneducated urban and rural lower classes were
intensely devoted to Islam, but they lacked a thorough knowledge
of the religion. Even village religious leaders had only a
rudimentary knowledge of Islam. The typical village imam or
prayer leader had at most a few years of schooling; his scholarly
work was limited to reading prayers and sermons prepared by
others and to learning passages from the Quran. Popular religion
included a variety of unorthodox practices, such as veneration of
saints, recourse to charms and amulets, and belief in the
influence of evil spirits.

Popular Islam is based mostly on oral tradition. Imams with
virtually no formal education commonly memorize the entire Quran
and recite appropriate verses on religious occasions. They also
tell religious stories at village festivals and commemorations
marking an individual's rites of passage. Predestination plays an
important role in popular Islam. This concept includes the belief
that everything that happens in life is the will of God and the
belief that trying to avoid misfortune is useless and invites
worse affliction. Monotheism merges with a belief in magic and
spirits (jinns) who are believed to inhabit the mountains.

Popular Islam ranges from informal prayer sessions or Quran
study to organized cults or orders. Because of the pervasive
sexual segregation of Egypt's Islamic society, men and women
often practice their religion in different ways. A specifically
female religious custom is the zar, a ceremony for helping
women placate spirits who are believed to have possessed them.
Women specially trained by their mothers or other women in
zar lore organize the ceremonies. A zar organizer
holds weekly meetings and employs music and dance to induce
ecstatic trances in possessed women. Wealthy women sometimes pay
to have private zars conducted in their homes; these
zars are more elaborate than public ones, last for several
days, and sometimes involve efforts to exorcise spirits.

A primarily male spiritual manifestation is Sufism, an
Islamic mystical tradition. Sufism has existed since the early
days of Islam and is found in all Islamic countries. The name
derives from the Arabic word suf (wool), referring to the
rough garb of the early mystics. Sufism exists in a number of
forms, most of which represent an original tariqa
(discipline or way; pl., turuq) developed by an inspired
founder, or shaykh. These shaykhs gradually gathered about
themselves murids, or disciples, whom they initiated into
the tariqa. Gradually the murids formed orders,
also known as turuq, which were loyal to the shaykh or his
successors. The devotions of many Sufi orders center on various
forms of the dhikr, a ceremony at which music, body
movements, and chants induce a state of ecstatic trance in the
disciples. Since the early 1970s, there has been a revival of
interest in Sufism. Egypt's contemporary Sufis tend to be young,
college-educated men in professional careers.

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